


Lost Without You

by bluflamingo



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Magic, post-Vegas move, soulbond (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/pseuds/bluflamingo
Summary: The first day of training camp, Sid's taking the turn for airport parking before he realises that he's not supposed to be there. A chorus of car horns accompanies his last minute correction, and again when he nearly takes the turn back towards his house, instead of towards the arena.It's no big deal, he tells himself firmly. He spent a lot of time flying around over the summer, and he was distracted, thinking about the start of hockey again. He's fine. Everything's fine.





	Lost Without You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zeenell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeenell/gifts).



The first day of training camp, Sid's taking the turn for airport parking before he realises that he's not supposed to be there. A chorus of car horns accompanies his last minute correction, and again when he nearly takes the turn back towards his house, instead of towards the arena.

It's no big deal, he tells himself firmly. He spent a lot of time flying around over the summer, and he was distracted, thinking about the start of hockey again. He's fine. Everything's fine.

He left home early enough that even the detour doesn't make him late to practice, just later than usual. Late enough that Flower would normally be there, and the part of his brain that hasn’t accepted Flower's a Knight now still looks for him.

"You're late," Tanger says, before Sid can get stuck on how someone else is sitting in Flower's stall, and between being tackle-hugged by Tanger and welcoming the new rookies, Sid mostly forgets about his weird morning.

Except that it happens the next day, and on the way home the day after that. The fourth day, he plugs his GPS in and points it to the arena, even though he one hundred percent knows the way.

He's halfway to the airport before he realises he's stopped listening to it.

"Get a grip," Sid tells himself firmly, and turns around, again.

It still doesn't mean anything, he tells himself. He spends a lot of time driving to the airport, and he's never had the best sense of direction, and maybe he's a bit distracted thinking about their first couple of pre-season games, maybe that's why, or maybe he needs to drink more coffee.

Whatever. Monday's a fresh start, he'll pay more attention to the turns and this'll just be one more weird start to the season.

And then, Sunday morning, he gets in his car to go buy bagels from the really good bakery downtown, and ends up outside Flower's house.

Flower's old house: there's a new car in the driveway, and someone's cut down the ragged tree that blocked the window to the one guest room no-one ever used. Despite that, Sid spends way too long staring at the place, like Flower's going to appear if he just looks hard enough.

Which, after far too long, is when he realises what's happening.

*

"Good morning," Flower says when Sid calls. Sid waited until early afternoon in Pittsburgh, but Flower still sounds irritated. "Guess where I am right now?"

"Um," Sid says intelligently. He's back in his house, without bagels, because he didn't trust himself not to -

"I'm in Riverside, Sid. Because I got in my car intending to drive three miles to get ice cream, because today is supposed to hit 40 degrees, and instead I drove for an hour before I realised not only that I left Vegas behind half an hour ago, but also that _I hadn't noticed it happening_."

Yeah, that's why Sid hasn't left the house: Riverside is one of the last stops before route 170 crosses the border into Utah, if someone leaves Las Vegas and heads east. Towards, say, Pittsburgh. "Sorry," he says.

Flower sighs, but Sid can feel the irritation seeping away, even with two thousand miles between them. "You too?"

"The airport," Sid admits. "And this morning, your house."

"Better than Ohio," Flower says, resigned. "So, I guess the whole 'low level resonance' is having more of an effect than anyone expected."

No-one really knows what resonance is, or how it works. Like smelling almonds with cyanide, people with the gene can feel resonance when it's there, and lots of organisations have someone with the gene who's also skilled enough to read resonance levels, and trace the sources. Most people agree that resonance is one of those now-defunct biological functions that hasn't died out yet, like tonsils; not everyone has it, and even people who do have it don't have it in all their relationships. Or rather, they might, but they don't know, because most people never get tested unless things start going weird, or there's a need. Like one of the core, long-term members of a hockey team leaving for the other side of the country. 

"I guess," he agrees. 

Flower doesn't say anything back, and Sid's got nothing to add, so for a long moment, he just listens to Flower's breathing and the rush of traffic on the other end of the line. It's kind of soothing.

Eventually, Flower hmms a little, like maybe Sid wasn't the only one who started drifting a bit. "I suppose it'll fade," he says, "Once things settle down."

"I guess," Sid agrees again. It must be the return to hockey causing it - they're used to being together when the season starts, it makes sense that any resonance would start causing trouble at the change in routine. "No big deal, right?"

"Right," Flower says.

*

Shows what they know.

*

"Hello," Flower says when Sid grabs his phone during a break in training, a week or so later, and Sid can tell just from that one word that something's happened again.

"Enjoying Riverside?" he asks, ducking into the corridor. 

"Oh, I'm not in Riverside." It's still early in Vegas, but Flower doesn't sound happy. "I went in to say good morning to Estelle before I went for a run, and she asked me why I was wearing your shirt."

"Mine?" Sid parrots. It's not that weird – just that he knows of in his house, he has one of Taylor's hockey school shirts, a Hockey Russia hoodie that Geno left behind once, and one of Nate's practice jerseys from his first year with the Avs – but surely Flower would have noticed when he was packing.

"Specifically, your 2009 Cup Champions shirt."

"Oh, crap." Because Sid hasn't worn that since 2009, so there's no way he could have left it at Flower's place, but more than that, it's a 2009 Champions shirt. As well as being the first year they won the Cup, 2009 is the year that, drunk after winning said Cup, Flower and Sid ended up making out in one of Mario's guest rooms. They'd talked about it before, the two of them and with Vero, and they've done a lot more than kiss since, but that was the start, and if it's powerful enough to have caused Sid's shirt to manifest in Flower's closest, then they've got bigger issues than resonance.

*

"This would have been easier if you'd figured it out before Marc-Andre went to Vegas," Dr Lam from the Penguins medical staff says when Sid explains it to her, Flower on speakerphone.

"We're aware," Sid says, instead of thinking about how things might be different if they'd figured it out before the Vegas draft. Of course, they probably still wouldn't have told anyone, since it's one thing to be gay and a whole other to have a best-friends-with-benefits relationship with your married goalie. "What can we do about it now?"

"I assume it's not an option for either of you to travel to the other one right now?"

"No," Sid and Flower say in unison, though Lam was already shaking her head before they started talking. 

"Well," Flower adds, "I could talk to Gallant, he might be willing to give me a couple of days."

"Don't do that." Sid leans in closer to his cell phone, even though the video isn't switched on. "It's not coming to that, right?" Flower is the Knights' star, but there's a lot of pressure on them being the first expansion team in seventeen years, and it doesn't take much for a star to become expendable in that kind of environment. 

"Manifestations aren't great," Lam says, "But Sid's right, there are other options, especially when you're only manifesting things that are significant to both of you."

"So we don't have to start worrying until Sid starts manifesting things that aren't hockey-related?" Flower teases. "Oh, Sid, what if you start manifesting Flyers' gear?"

"You have Flyers' gear in your house?" Sid demands, genuinely dismayed, even though he's pretty sure Flower's entirely kidding.

"If we can get back on track, gentlemen?" Sid looks back at Lam, who he'd sort of forgotten was in the room, but she's smiling. "I'm going to write you a script for some pills, ten days initially, and I want the two of you to come up with some routines for keeping in touch, or keeping connected. To be honest, that's likely to be more help than the pills, so focus on that. Marc-Andre, I'll email something through to – it's Harrison, isn't it, in Vegas?"

Lam sends Sid off with a prescription for a medication he's never heard of and can't pronounce, and Flower still on the other end of the phone. "So, hey," Flower says when Sid confirms that he's in the relative privacy of a training room, "Does that mean we have a medical recommendation for phone sex every night?"

Sid rolls his eyes, smiling. "Not until you promise you really don't have any Flyers' gear."

*

They settle into a habit pretty fast: Sid calls during the morning break in training, which mostly means he listens to Flower and Vero's morning routine and says hi to the girls, and then Flower calls after the girls, and increasingly Sidney too, are in bed. Sid loves being part of the morning routine, but his favourite thing is definitely curling down into the blankets and talking through their days while Flower smiles at him over Skype.

"You look tired," Flower says, a week into their new routine. 

Sid shrugs as much as he can lying down. "It took me three tries to actually get home after practice."

Flower makes a face. "Vero's stated calling if I'm gone for more than half an hour running errands." He smiles ruefully. "I miss you."

"Me too." Flower's been part of Sid's life for his entire NHL career; he can't stop looking for Flower at every practice. "Tell me about Vegas," he says, instead of letting either of them dwell on it. 

"Oh, God," Flower groans, "It's like playing with an entire team of rookies, except they have the confidence of seasoned professionals, and no-one's entirely sure they want to be here."

Sid can't really imagine that, but it sounds like a nightmare. Flower's smiling, though, the way he used to when things were going really well with the Penguins. The way they didn't see much in the last year, even after they made the playoffs. "Sounds like it's the right place for you to be."

"Hey," Flower says softly, "It doesn't change how much I care for you. You'll always be important to me, all of you will."

Sid does know that, of course he does, but he still has to swallow a lump in his throat. "You're a Penguin forever," he says back, and watches the way Flower's face softens into a smile.

*

When they don't manifest anything, and the random driving towards each other starts to tail off, Lam takes them off the meds. They keep up the twice daily phone calls and as the pre-season draws closer, Sid starts to believe that things might be settling down.

Until he wakes up one morning to find Flower in bed next to him. "Um," he says intelligently, and pokes Flower's shoulder till he wakes up, takes one look at Sid, and says, "Oh crap, no."

Which, even allowing for the circumstances, is not exactly the way Sid wants his boyfriend to react to waking up in his bed. Some of that must show on his face, cos Flower reaches out one long arm and reels Sid into a hug. Like Sid, he's wearing pajama pants and nothing else; Sid cuddles into the warmth of his bare skin, relishing something he's really missed.

"Better?" Flower asks.

Sid kisses his shoulder. "Thanks," he says, breathing in the sleepy smell of their bodies. "You can freak out now, if you want."

"Maybe later." Flower hugs Sid closer, nuzzles into his hair until Sid tips his face up for a kiss. "I have to call Vero and tell her where I am."

"And then?" Sid asks, pressing in for another kiss. 

Flower gropes his ass, then, like Sid might not have got the message, says, "Then, we take advantage of this happening."

*

When they call Dr Lam, her voice makes it entirely clear that she doesn't believe it for a second when they claim Flower only just turned up. Despite that, and it being Saturday morning, she agrees to meet them at the arena.

They arrive to find Sully already there, in jeans, which is super-weird, and Dr Harrison from the Knights on video call. Sid kind of wants to reach for Flower's hand, but no-one's actually asked if the two of them are together, though he's sure everyone assumes, and he'd really prefer that no-one does ask.

"I thought things were improving," Harrison says as they all sit down. Sid doesn't know him at all – the Knights hired him away from the Barracudas to head up their medical team – but he's frowning over dark-framed glasses in a way that makes Sid glad the Penguins have Dr Lam instead. 

"So did I," she tells him. "But clearly we were both wrong."

It's – resonance strong enough to bring a person across the country is unusual, but according to everything Sid's read, it's also often a one-off, and therefore not necessarily a cause for major concern.

On the other hand, he really doesn't want to end up in Vegas in the middle of a game. 

"Clearly," Harrison says darkly. "Fleury, I'm going to write you a new script when you get back. I don't want this happening again."

Flower flinches, small enough that Sid's pretty sure only he notices. 

"That's one option," Lam says lightly. "But that's not a long-term solution."

"Neither is having my players randomly disappear."

"Believe me," Sully cuts in calmly, "None of us are particularly happy with this situation. Not that it's not nice to have you back, Marc."

Flower grins ruefully. "Not how I planned on it either."

"Since we're all in agreement that ideally both Sidney and Marc-Andre would stay where they're supposed to be," Lam interrupts, before Sid can pipe up that he's pretty happy to have Flower back, "I've been reading some of the newer research, and there's something I think it would be worth us trying."

Sid looks at Flower, finds Flower's already looking at him. "Do we like the sound of that?" Flower asks.

"It's an option, we wouldn't force it." Both Sully and Harrison look like they want to disagree with Lam, but they both keep quiet. It's not like they'd have to force it, anyway – Sid's well aware of all the other ways a hockey organisation can get players to do something without forcing it. "There's a research team in Quebec City, magic and biology specialists, looking at how to identify and manage resonance. They've had some success with the use of ritual to steady out resonance like the two of you are experiencing."

Ritual is something they're both familiar with – hockey players believe in the power of it more than maybe any other group of people anywhere, though usually in an organic way that grows out of seeing what works, repeating it until it goes beyond habit and into something with power. Sid, though, doesn't know anyone who built a ritual on purpose. 

"That's not what the phone calls are for?" he asks. 

Lam tips her hand from side to side. "There's a difference between routine and ritual. I'm talking about something more one-off, rather than a repeated behaviour."

"Like…" Yeah, Sid's got nothing, and from his frown, neither does Flower. 

"The paper I read suggested a number of things," Lam says. "And of course, if you wanted to go that route, you could come up with something yourselves. But I was thinking of a tattoo."

Lots of players have tattoos, for decoration and for deeper purposes, but Sid, even back before the concussion when someone suggested a healing mark, has never really loved the idea. Instinctively, he starts to say no, except –

Except the way Lam says it, a ritual, a way of calming the resonance between the two of them, but also a way to bond it in place forever, a way to say that they'll always be important to each other, always be linked together…

"I can't speak for Sid," Flower says softly, a little shaken, his eyes very wide when Sid looks at him, "But I'd be happy to try that."

"Yeah," Sid says, just as soft, totally unable to look away from his partner, "Yeah, me too."

*

Flower has to go back to Vegas, and everyone agrees that it's not a good idea for the two of them to get matching tattoos together – especially matching tattoos on their hips, one of those places that, by virtue of being generally hidden by clothes, is considered more meaningful than a shoulder or wrist. Before he leaves, the two of them sit down and perfect the image they're going to get – a small, chubby penguin wearing a helmet and holding a stick, cute enough that people who do realise they match will hopefully think it's funny, and obvious enough that it will get chalked up to team loyalty, even now Flower's gone.

Of course, it'll be harder to explain how Sid's penguin has number 29 on its helmet, and Flower's has 87, but the numbers are tiny enough that someone would have to get really close to read them.

When the resonance dies back down to nothing just in time for the start of the season, Lam says that it shows the ritual of the matching tattoos, inked at the same time in two different cities, must have worked.

Sid brushes his thumb over the tattoo through his sweatpants, feels all of Flower's love and affection wrap round him even from two thousand miles away, and thinks that it's not the ritual that worked, it's the permanence: no matter what changes, they're Penguins together forever, now.


End file.
